Indic Religions
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My Friend, Siddhartha
I wish I had read Hermann Hesse’s Siddhartha when I was a teenager, but I’m so glad I picked it up at 25. While browsing through the clearance section of a Barnes and Noble,–a great place to find collections of ancient myths, story books depicting the lives of sacred figures, and modern spiritual inspirations–I picked up a coloring book that advertises itself as an aid for meditation. I must have been leaning into my artistic side that day because another little book caught my eye among the disheveled stacks: an Illustrated Edition of Hermann Hesse’s Siddhartha. It felt as if the gold lettering on the book’s spine was illuminating my…
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Exchanging self for others: the ongoing process of hospitality in Mahāyāna Buddhism
Before we begin, I would like to propose a brief exercise. Please consider this as an invitation to experience something different, but feel free to not engage in it if you do not feel comfortable with it. Let us imagine ourselves, with all the conditions we currently have at our disposal: food, drink, a roof over our heads, education, access to health system, a community we are part of, and also our abilities to benefit other beings. Even though we have all that, our minds are focused on the problems we have in our daily lives – papers to write, our jobs to keep, taxes and debts, conflicts with family…
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Plant Worship to Planned Performances: Changing Human- Nature Relationship and Ritual Practices
Nature, a term freely used in multiple contexts and holds several meanings. The word nature is often defined or understood as the inherent quality of any particular thing. The Latin word natura is used to denote the essential constitution of the world. Since sustainable development poses a global challenge, interaction between human society and nature becomes an object of concern. The idea of a personified nature has given us several pictures; of a nature that speaks, interacts, and even takes revenge. Understanding the abstraction of nature in human minds is a complicated process. However, looking at the multiple manifestations of nature, without reducing it into a mere physical entity, gives…
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“The Apocalypse as a Cosmotheandric Communion: A Hindu-Christian Dialogue” – An Interview with Shruti Dixit
As part of interfaith week, we are interviewing a number of people connected with Practical Theology Hub about their work on interfaith dialogue. In this interview we ask former member of our editorial team, Shruti Dixit, about Hindu-Christian dialogue and her recently published paper, “The Apocalypse as a Cosmotheandric Communion: A Hindu-Christian Dialogue.“ Tell us about yourself. I am currently a second-year doctoral researcher at the Centre for the Study of Religion and Politics, School of Divinity, University of St Andrews, researching the plausibility of a Hindu-Christian dialogue based on the notion of end times. Due to my strong belief in impactful research, I am involved in multiple interfaith projects.…
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What is generosity from a Buddhist perspective?
What is generosity? We commonly think of generosity as an action – we give food to someone who asks, we give money to someone on the streets – but generosity can involve many aspects that can be taken for granted. In Mahāyāna Buddhism, generosity (Skt. dāna-pāramitā, Tib. སྦྱིན་པའི་ཕ་རོལ་ཏུ་ཕྱིན་པ་) is one of the pāramitās (a word that is commonly translated as “perfection,” but actually means something closer to “something that goes beyond”), and the practice of this perfection is important for the accumulation of merit (Skt. puṇya, Tib. བསོད་ནམས་). But what is merit? In some popular understandings, merit can be explained using the analogy of money in a bank account –…
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Responding to the Cosmic Chorus: A Meditation on the Ecological Visions of Islamic and Hindu Theologies
Mortal dooms and dynasties are brief things, but beauty is indestructible and eternal, if its tabernacle be only a petal that is shed tomorrow…Inter arma silent flores [“In times of war, flowers fall silent”] is no truth; on the contrary, amid the crash of doom our sanity and survival more than ever depend on the strength with which we can listen to the still small voice that towers above the cannons, and cling to the little quiet things of life, the things that come and go and yet are always there, the inextinguishable lamps of God amid the disaster that man has made of his life. Reginald Farrer quoted in:…
